1.7 million to repaint the lanes!

A good plan. Safety is paramount for our increasingly pedestrian-friendly town, and safer bike lanes will be huge. "Don't *drive* down Castro St" should be the motto.

I imagine there will be signal work needed, as well as skilled electrical.Cranes, cherry pickers, etc. The painting is likely the least of the many tasks involved. What a relief, eh?

Its nice that the city is fixing an intersection *before* someone loses their life or gets severely injured. I use this intersection as both a driver, biker, and pedestrian. As a driver, I have multiple acceptable alternatives as a ped/biker I have few so I don't have any problem with this change.

It's a sensible decision given it'll take years to close Castro by the tracks. However, why is it funded by community benefits collected in the San Antonio area (Merlone Geier)?

Perhaps I'm exposing my ignorance here, but why was removing the crosswalk on the northern side of the intersection not an option?

There's a crosswalk on the southern side, as well as north/south crosswalks on both sides of Central. Seems like this would have resolved the safety issue without removing the left turns lanes, minimal downside to pedestrians, and minimal cost to the city...

I thought this whole crossing was going to be closed? Why are we spending money to reconfigure it when its days area numbered? Closing it obviates the whole problem.

I recently visited Boulder, CO and their Pearl Street is closed to vehicle traffic for about 5 block and it is really nice. Its a very similar setup to our downtown.

Rossta, the article explains that it will take many years to finally close this intersection. I agree closing it is a great solution; all of Castro should be closed but the businesses object because they think they'll lose business. They are wrong -- more people would come to downtown if Castro was a pedestrian walkway with pleasant outside eating areas and no cars and trucks.

There should be a pedestrian underpass at that intersection and one on Rengstorff & Central as well. I have personally witnessed many close calls where pedestrians recklessly race across the street in order to not miss their train.

Hey Confused!
A simple plan like the one you suggested would be too simple. That and it wouldn’t cost as much as the plan they agreed on. Further the bike folks wouldn’t get their new bike lane!
If this was REALLY about pedestrian safety, they would shut down the Right turn lane as well, because the EXACT SAME SCENARIO exists there. But that would never fly... shaking my head.

frisbee of Sylvan Park wrote: "all of Castro should be closed but the businesses object because they think they'll lose business. They are wrong -- more people would come to downtown if Castro was a pedestrian walkway with pleasant outside eating areas and no cars and trucks."

But you don't know that, though you believe it. The comment above is a very typical sentiment from people who envision Castro like now, just without traffic. I live near the downtown and would hugely benefit if those visions bore out. The problem is, good intentions aren't enough for good outcomes. Closures to make pedestrian zones sometimes work, but sometimes they kill off the business activity for subtle reasons. That's well established and has been pointed out repeatedly in these discussions, with examples, for years.

Businesses are concerned because they have far more at stake than casual online-forum commenters across town, and because it has happened before within living memory. "Castro Street appears quite desolate and bleak in this 1982 photograph of the 200 block. The only people on its narrow brick sidewalks are two souls waiting for a bus. By the 1980s, most shoppers had abandoned downtown for the malls" (Nick Perry's book). "This isn't what I had in mind" will sound pretty lame, if that recurs for reasons you didn't personally forsee.

I'm for good outcomes, not just good intentions. Anyway, Council's current plan, still controversial for the reasons above, doesn't close "all Castro" or even much of it. Just the train-tracks and Central-Expressway crossings.

What doesn't make sense about this so-called safety problem is the fact that even though North Bound Castro gets a green light when a train comes, it is ONLY the light for vehicles that are between the tracks and Central. During the last re-work of this intersection, they changed the flashing red lights that allowed cars to cross the tracks to the area between the tracks and Central to solid red lights. This means, any car that is actually able to take advantage of the green when a train comes had already violated the law by running a red light to get into that position. When they go forward with this new plan we can only hope that common sense will prevail and they will return to the flashing red signals at the tracks. This will allow six vehicles to take advantage of the greens when a train comes AND will allow for "right turn on red" for cars entering East bound Central. This will go along way in alleviating the backup of cars into downtown at peak hours. Now, if we can only get MVPD to more actively enforce the illegal blocking of traffic lanes by Uber/Lyft drivers, especially when they stop at the 100 block crosswalk, we might alleviate a more serious danger of having cars backed up over the tracks when a train comes. I'm amazed we have seen a car vs train collision from this yet. This is all just dreaming though, since every traffic change I have seen in recent history has been indicative of the utter incompetence of our city traffic engineers.

Seems odd to me to act before any injuries have happened—a solution in search of a problem. Why couldn't a left green arrow work?

I'm all for the plan of closing Castro at the tracks altogether and I hope that this near-term expenditure doesn't further delay it or reduce available funding for doing _that_ project as nicely as we can (with good ped/bike access). Specifically, if the rationale for this project is pedestrian safety, couldn't we _start_ with the ped/bike part of the long-term plan? That part doesn't need to wait on a ramp that might never happen, right?

Incidentally, I'm really not sure that the businesses actually have all that much more "at stake" than nearby homeowners, whose property values could change as much as it would cost some of those businesses to relocate.

Unfortunately, the two downtown-side access points for the ped/bike underpass appear to be located in the middle of the current street and inside Savvy Cellar, so we would have to close the intersection _before_ opening the underpass:

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